


The seventh tape

by Sierra Roo (SoySierra)



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Drama, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 16:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoySierra/pseuds/Sierra%20Roo
Summary: An envelope was deposited in his mail one Monday afternoon. He could felt the cover of a book inside. A book that he had not ordered. Boris had been waiting for something like this to happen. He had waited a long time after Valery's death. Boris opened the book. A perfectly cut hole between the pages. Inside, a tape.





	The seventh tape

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my native language so sorry if you find mistakes. Enjoy!

An envelope was deposited in his mail one Monday afternoon. He could felt the cover of a book inside. A book that he had not ordered. Boris had been waiting for something like this to happen. He had waited a long time after Valery's death.

Once inside the apartment, he left the package on the dining room table. The afternoon sun still lit the place. He went to shower and then dined frugally. At nightfall, he closed the curtains.

The envelope had become a disturbing presence in the room. Boris held it in his hands for a time that was infinite. He ran his fingers through his folds and examined the fictitious address from where it had been sent. The book inside was an old version of "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky. A reading that had never appealed to him. Too many pages. Too many pages that in this case served a purpose that was not to entertain a possible reader.

Boris opened the book. A perfectly cut hole between the pages. Inside, a tape.

Boris closed the book with one blow, put it back in the envelope and tossed it in the trash can. A sudden fury invading him. He did not need that now. He had other things to deal with. Valery was dead. That tape would not change anything. It would not bring him back ..

To be able to hear his voice again...

No.

Valery had chosen death. He understood. He understood his reasons. He was aware that his death was perhaps the only way for another tragedy such as Chernobyl's to not happen again. He was well able to understand all this ..

That did not make him less angry.

Valery had chosen death. He had not said goodbye. He had left him alone in the world. Valery had chosen death. He could choose not to listen to him.

Boris did not take out the trash that day.

*

_Borja ..._

Listening to Valera's voice again had ended up being too great a temptation. Boris held his breath. The recorder on the table and his index finger inches from the pause button. Upon hearing his name he was impossibly tempted to stop it.

_Don´t get up. It's still dark outside. It is not dawn yet and the room is cold outside the blankets. Don´t get up yet.._

_I can be here with you. I can hold you from behind. My body stuck to yours, my chest resting on your back. It is nice. We have more heat in this way. Let's stay a moment like this ..._

A silence. Almost as if Valery gave him the necessary time to imagine it. As if he, when recording it, would also allow himself a moment to live that fantasy.

_Let´s imagine something. They can´t hear us inside our heads. Let's imagine that they have given us the day off._

A snap of his tongue. The smile, perceptible in his words.

_Yes I know. It's crazy, but imagine it for a moment. You have always been a man capable of achieving things and this time you have achieved this. They have given us a day off for our noble work. One day. Only one day off ..._

Boris, slid his hand across the tablecloth as if it were a sheet. He could almost feel the heat of Valera enveloping him.

_We could stay like this. All day in bed. We could..._

A slight laugh.

_Can you imagine the face of the officers if we do that? Can you imagine their expression if they see us leaving the same room after having spent the whole day together?_

The sound of air being inhaled and then exhaled. Boris could almost feel the smell of Valera's tobacco in the room.

_Yeah, you are right. They wouldn´t put any expression. They would only take us at the end of the day. That would be all. It wouldn´t be fun._

_But we can do other things without attracting attention. We can leave the room when the sun is high in the sky. No need to rush and run after alarms and calls. No one would call us that day. Can you imagine? You wouldn´t have to shout at anyone on the other side of the line.. Even though..._

A liquid being served. Valery drank while recording.

_Although, I must confess that I have always liked the way you can impose on others. How do you do that. How you can make everyone listen to the man of the party.._

Boris smiled. He could imagine him sitting in his little kitchen. Smoking and drinking, the tape recorder on the table. The sun filtering in the window. No, he was wrong. He had to do it at night. A risky task such as recording a tape could only have been done with the shelter of darkness and closed curtains.

_We could go for a walk. Since I was a child I've always wanted to get on one of those wheels of fortune. I've seen one at the entrance to the city. I would like to know how vertigo feels. To be able to feel that I can rise above all this, leave the ground below, the city. But.._

A deep sigh.

_But there would be no way to do something so foolish in Pripyat. It's a shame, a real shame .._

Boris stopped the recording abruptly. Suddenly, he was unable to continue listening. Quickly, he removed the cassette from the recorder and hid it behind a socket on the wall. He put the recorder in a drawer and stood in the room without being able to decide what to do. His pulse had quickened and he felt breathless as if there were something threatening in the room. He had not heard footsteps outside. No, that was not what had altered him so much. He did not understand what was happening with his body. It was a kind of attack ..

A strong coughing brought him out of that strange state and he was forced to crawl into the bathroom. In those days, seeing blood was the usual.

Only at night, when he was already in bed about to fall asleep, did he dare to think about Valery. Only in that state, between consciousness and unconsciousness, he was able to identify what had happened moments before. He had imagined Valery up on a wheel of fortune, a grown man, naive and ridiculous, marveling at the mechanisms of the game. Then, he remembered what he had thought immediately afterwards.

_Valera had never climbed on a wheel of fortune. He never would._

It had been an overwhelmingly sad thought.

*

Several days passed before he could listen to the recording again. A mixture of emotions had invaded him throughout the week. The anger he had felt in the beginning had given way to deep sadness. Knowing that Valery would never have the chance to do something as silly and naive as getting on that childish game, had somehow saddened him more than he could have imagined.

_Excuse me. I have asked you to imagine this but I am not even able to imagine a world very different from this one. Maybe, it's because of my profession. Maybe physicists are not very creative .._

There was something in the words. A certain way of saying them and of breathing between one sentence and another that indicated that Valery was also trying to deal with his anguish. Boris forced himself to continue listening.

_I have seen a lake. It's outside of the city. It would take us a while to get there but it would be worth it. We would avoid the deserted city. Even, maybe we could forget for a moment the condemnation of this place._

_Maybe, if I feel especially brave, I could take you by the hand. That's another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately. Being able to hold hands in broad daylight. Without hiding, without pretending. Speak out loud, stop whispering. For a moment, stop feeling that what happens to us is wrong and must be condemned. Can you imagine that, Borja? Can you do it?_

Boris nodded in silence. He had closed his eyes so that Valera's voice was the only stimulus that invaded his senses. He could see it, the whisper of the water reaching the shore, both standing in front of the lake, just feeling the presence of the other at his side …

_We would go back to the hotel later. We would wait for the prudential time we always wait before going to the other's room. It must always be quick, counting the breaths, paying attention to the steps that can be heard. It would not be like that this time. No. This time I could love you. I could do it as you deserve. Even.._

A pause. Valery took a breath before continuing.

_I remember the smell of your cologne. I don´t know its name and I visit the stores to find it. The smell of your cologne becomes more intense when I approach your neck. You are an elegant man Borja. I know you know it. I know you know the way the clothes fit your body. I know you know the authority you emit with your black coat fluttering behind you. I know you know it but I must_ say it _anyway ..._

_I don´t know what you've seen in me. I still wonder. That's why this day I would let you see me. I would leave the lights on and allow you to see my body. I know you've wanted it before. So, for this day, I would leave aside all that I think of myself and leave me at your judment. I trust you Borja. You don´t know until what point, I .._

A few seconds of silence. The whisper of clothes and then the sound of knocks on the door. The recording was suspended indefinitely until it stopped.

Nothing.

Then nothing. Boris let out the air he did not know he had been holding. He rewinded and pushed the tape forward in a futile attempt to listen more.

_I trust you Borja. You don´t know until what point, I .._

The tape was abruptly interrupted. In the same way it had happened in their relationship. There was not a closure. There was not a farewell for them.

*

The following weeks followed one another in an unclear nebula. Boris was aware that he had attended his work, that he had communicated with other officials to attend to party matters, that he had gone to the doctor for as many pills as possible, not to improve his clearly irreversible state, but to calm the pain.

However, he had not felt himself doing those tasks. The tape was the only thing he could think of. He had listened to the recording so many times, that the sentences had lost their meaning. He stopped in the tone, in the silences between one word and another, in the almost imperceptible breathing of Valera while recording, in the background noises ..

It worried him the way in which the tape stopped and he couldn´t stop to formulate scenarios that could explain it. Had it been a KGB spy knocking on his door? Or maybe a neighbor? Maybe a member of the party? Valera could not continue recording after that interruption and he kept wondering what else he could have said next ...

_Valera._

That day Boris took another way home. Instead of his usual route he followed the road that led to the city park. The huge and colorful wheel loomed over the other games. Boris paid the entrance and ignored the looks.

He did not have much time left to meet Valera again, wherever he was. He had no doubt that they would see each other again and when they did, he wanted to make sure he could reproduce every detail of the experience.

Boris entered the small cabin that swayed slightly at his weight. Moments later, the wheel began to move. Little by little it was leaving the park, the city behind ...

The cabin was slowly rising toward the sky.

Boris closed his eyes and let the vertigo invade him.

End


End file.
